


Sensation and Sound

by 16pennies



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Oneshot, also may change the title, this just needed to claw its way out of my brain today, will probably come back and edit later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 23:45:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16252259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/16pennies/pseuds/16pennies
Summary: She's never given much thought to the power of a face before. It seems so fundamental a thing, she thinks. How can one truly know another without being acquainted with the face?





	Sensation and Sound

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I had to wear a mask today. A gruesome one, with twisted lips and a bloated eye socket; it covered my whole face and wouldn’t sit properly and I had to strap it around my skull. I felt trapped and my voice echoed back at myself strangely and I had no peripheral vision. Then I was told to sing.
> 
> This came out.

 

She's never given much thought to the power of a face before.

It's obvious, she thinks; of course a face is important. Why, one can hardly think of Raoul without picturing the gentility in the slopes of his cheeks. Christine sees his kindness there.

And then there is Meg, of course. Her laugh is synonymous with the crinkles around her eyes, the scrunching of her expression into delighted wrinkles of amusement.

Christine can see her father's face, too. The fatigued age which creased his features and yet when his image appears in her mind she knows only his love, written there in his unique arrangement of mouth and nose and hollow of cheek.

It seems so fundamental a thing, she thinks. How can one truly know another without being acquainted with the face? Every twitch of expression, every shade of emotion! It is all there, providing more information in an instant than one could possibly hope to glean from a lifetime of mere conversation.

Is it a flaw of human nature, she wonders, that we as a species have apparently elected to condense so much of ourselves into such a small space on our bodies? Christine doesn’t know who to ask these questions, doesn’t even know if there’s anybody with an answer.

And then there is Erik.

He would have an answer, she thinks. Perhaps it would be bitter, or scathingly witty. It may not even be true. But surely he has spared a thought, throughout his agonising lifetime at the mercy of the worst of humanity, as to why it all matters to begin with.

It is strange to her that she thinks she knows Erik, to some extent—she is fairly well acquainted with his turns of character, at the very least—and yet when she conjures him in her head she sees… nothing, really. Not like with Raoul, whose name instantly brings a memory of his joyous smile to mind; or Meg, of whom Christine has enough mischievous smirks to fill library. With Erik there is only a vague smell of underground and candlewax, the echo of violin strings. A shadow of a person.

She has seen his face, of course, though only fleetingly. She can remember it if she tries, though piecing together his deathly visage brings her no pleasure whatsoever, if only because she knows it would upset him (and she can’t quite remember how the left side of his non-existent nose goes). Christine doesn’t want that to be what lingers in her head when she hears his name. It doesn’t even seem like it’s really him.

But the mask! That is hardly him, either! How can one define oneself by a deliberate obstruction?

Christine does not know if the space between his brows creases when he reads, or how the euphoria of his music manifests across his features.

And so she learns to know him in other ways

His voice, so full of character, each cadence a precise portrayal of staggering intelligence and good humour—or bitter resentment, by turns. When she thinks of Erik, she hears him in her ears; all the colours of existence carried in that magnificent instrument.

His hands, so strong yet delicate. He uses them with such surgical exactness and yet she has seen them quiver in moments of unease or flutter restlessly when possessed by the drive to _do_ , to create. When she thinks of Erik, she sees his fingertips trickling along keys and strings, gracing gentle pressure against her elbow, betraying his excitement in a frenzy despite his efforts to appear the eternal master.

His slender figure. His words, too. The atmosphere he carries with his very presence. All these intangible things, and yet Christine clings to them, assembles them in her head as an abstract replica of this man who she can only just capture with this assortment of essences; bits and pieces of fragments of his existence. They run into one another, precariously balanced in a human-shaped space in her head.

She thinks of her collection of faces, of Meg and her mother, and Raoul and the managers and her papa; one after another, one by one…

She thinks of Erik, and a swirling rush of sensation and sound dances through her mind.

His face.


End file.
